(Mild spoilers ahead)

Do you love squirrels? I do. I'm a fan of most kinds of rodent, really, but there's just something a little extra awesome about squirrels. Maybe it's the poofy tails, or the nibbly way they devour peanuts with their delicate little paws... they just seem to say "Holy crap, can you believe how adorable I am?" Frankly I'm surprised that there haven't been more movies that feature squirrel characters, and maybe beggars can't be choosers, but I wasn't about to let "The Nut Job" pass through the theaters without giving it a whirl.

Gotta be up front, I knew full well this flick wasn't going to be any kind of masterpiece. Even discounting the critical brickbats it's been taking, let's face it, the trailer is 50% loud farts and screaming. Any movie that aims that low on the humor tree is clearly not trying to be the next "Ratatouille" or "Wall•E", and that's fine. Not everything has to be a game-changing tour de force. Sometimes it's good to just dial your expectations back and have some simple fun.

Oh, "Nut Job", you came so close. So very, damnably close to being one of those rough-diamond, nutty treat movies... you know the kind, that sort of sneak in under the radar and leave you going "Whaddaya know, that was actually pretty good!"

"The Nut Job" is not one of those, which is a real shame. Because it could have been. Because the things that it gets wrong aren't what you'd expect it to get wrong, and because there are some things that it gets right, things that slip in and leave you dazzled and moved in a way you didn't see coming. Things that make you wish someone with real storytelling chops had come in to help with the script.

Set in what appears to be the 1950s, "The Nut Job" tells the story of Surly, a purplish squirrel with a gleefully selfish attitude about life. "I'm no hero," he says at the beginning of the story, and it's to the movie's credit that he doesn't say it with wistful regret, but with matter-of-fact pride. It's an intriguing touch that the film avoids the usual cliché of the dreamy would-be hero who just can't catch a break... nope, right off the bat we learn that our protagonist is kind of a dick. Of course, that's clearly just a set-up for an eventual change of heart, but it's refreshing that a family flick about talking squirrels is willing to make such a gutsy, gray-area choice for a main character.

Only looking out for himself (and, grudgingly, his best pal Buddy, a perpetually fawning gray rat who can't seem to speak and who follows Surly around with the wide-eyed adoration of a love-struck puppy), Surly starts the story with a bang when he inadvertently detonates the winter food supply of the animal denizens of the city park where he lives. Unrepentant, Surly finds himself banished by the park's leader, a smoothly aristocratic raccoon (unimaginatively, and even strangely, named Raccoon... do raccoons not have names in Surly’s world?) who seems to be something like... I dunno, the mayor, maybe? President? King? The film's pretty hazy on how the animal society actually works.

Starving and scared on the mean city streets, Surly (and Buddy, who tags along) seems to hit the jackpot when he discovers a store that sells nothing but nuts, but complicating his dreams of blissfully cramming his cheeks with pecans and cashews all winter are a gang of human crooks who are using the store as a front for a bank heist. Even more hitches arrive in the form of a tenacious pug guard dog, a squadron of glowing-eyed sewer rats, lots of mousetraps, and a contingent of not-particularly-friendly rodents sent by Raccoon to try and forage some cold-weather food. Allegiances are made, double-crosses are dealt, explosions and farts happen with regrettable frequency, and through it all, Surly just wants to grab his nuts (yeah, that's the sort of pun we're dealing with here) and get away.

For a comedy, "The Nut Job" is surprisingly dark at times, dishing out violence that's either cartoonish or genuinely threatening, depending on the scene. There's quite a bit of serious dramatic undertone to the storyline, setting up as it does weighty issues about the nature of heroism, responsibility, social politics, and the ethics of stealing... but underwhelmingly, the filmmakers just don't seem to know what to do with those ideas. More often than not, an interesting opportunity for something moving or challenging pops up, only to be left unexplored, glossed over with a shrug, or buried by a flatulence joke. And there are way more of those than this movie needs - frankly, "The Nut Job" is so anally fixated on its furry cast that it's practically it's own slash fiction. Not that the uninspired "ewww, farts sure are stinky, aren’t they?" gags are really the problem here. The problem is that, whether it's being dark or goofball, silly or dramatic, the half-baked story simply fails to make any of it particularly meaningful.

This is the sort of movie where stuff just sort of happens, without much rhyme or reason. Friendships and alliances are made and broken at the drop of a hat. The characters are defined almost entirely by their archetypes, with no real depth or backstory to involve you in what they're doing. Why, for instance, is Surly so determined that he doesn't need anyone for much of the movie? Did something happen to him when he was younger, something tragic and bitter that left him unable to trust other folks? The story never fills in even a hint of his background, leaving his selfishness completely unexplained – as is his similarly intriguing (but also never explored) interspecies companionship with Buddy. "He’s cranky because he's named Surly", is about the best you can infer from the movie, which in all honesty isn't good enough – especially since we're meant to be moved later on when his callous heart starts melting a little.

Even more problematic is the character of Raccoon, who (spoilers here) the movie sort of shoehorns into being a villain for no discernible reason. I can’t overstate this… Raccoon’s eventual bad-guy behavior makes absolutely no sense. At all. He has no believable reason to betray his loyal subjects, and in fact his actions are blatantly counter to what he says he’s trying to do. He’s not just a poorly-motivated villain, he’s a distractingly baffling one. And he’s not the only character who does an about-face seemingly at random… virtually all of the characters say and do things that only kinda-sorta make sense, and never with anything resembling real depth.

Instead of investing the squirrels and other assorted rodents with actual personality, the filmmakers rely almost entirely on attitude and adorableness (which admittedly they do get right – unlike the grotesques in “Fly Me to the Moon” or “Space Chimps”, the cute critters in “Nut Job” are beautifully animated)… it’s worth noting that the two most genuinely touching, poignant scenes in the entire film involve Surly and Buddy simply staring (mostly) wordlessly at each other.

It’s all quite frustrating, because “The Nut Job” does show flashes of real inspiration, and there are brief snippets when the story sparks to life in a way that suggests that, with a bit more care and polish, this could have been a real gem. Instead, regrettably, it is what it is… an auspicious misfire, just clever enough to make you wish it was smarter, almost-funny enough to make you wish it had better jokes, nearly poignant enough to make you want to meet its rough ambitions halfway, and very close to being something special. Far from being a total failure, it’s got enough legitimate plusses that it makes you yearn for the truly good movie that it could have been. I’m actually glad that they’ve green lit a sequel, because these characters and their world are promising enough that, like Surly, they deserve a second chance.